This is an orientation lecture for those who've just moved to a state where the residents all have a stake in their exploitation and mistreatment and are convinced that it's a good idea to get the short end of the stick in perpetuity.
Topics: kickme, politics, kickme states, humor, satire, audio books, Roy Trumbull
The Meanness and Rationalization Party is vetting Vice-Presidential candidates. Medea is on the list even though she's had more than her share of bad press. How many votes can you get after you kill your children, poison your exes trophy bride, turn the kings murdered corpse into an entrée, and later attempt to poison your stepson?
Topics: Medea, vetting, politics, satire, campaign, vice president, audio book, Roy Trumbull
A young man is dead and his friends meet to attempt to decode a message found in his effects.
Topics: codes, ciphesr, computers, mystery, audio book, Roy Trumbull
It was writer Arthur C. Clarke who said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Ankal the witch is a story about a good witch and a bad witch. It takes place mostly in the present and pits our modern magic against the eye of newt tongue of frog kind. I took every opportunity in this story to poke fun at all the stuff we take too seriously. I expect no one will have any trouble with the wordplay. Ten years from now it will be as distant as Beowulf. The...
Topics: Ankal, witchcraft, Stevniak, Zarpi, magic, humor, witches, wizards, fantasy, Fright&Barrow,...
Fat Chance by Roy Trumbull - Creative Commons Copyright 2009 Some rights reserved. Detective Abe Howard and his AI computer Maija are looking for a killer. Members of high society are slimming down by getting massaged. Their fat is being removed via the hungry hands of aliens. The story is set 50+ years into the future. The Colorado River is more like a stream. The population in So. Ca is greatly reduced. The number of casinos in Vegas was reduced in a high stakes poker game. There is no money...
Topics: Fat Chance, Roy Trumbull, fat eaters, detective, Maija, geek lit, drone attack, Las Vegas, Colorado...
I think I had my first golf clubs when I was three. My dad, Barney Trumbull, was a dedicated golfer but I lacked the knack. That didn't keep me from playing with him on every golf course in Northern California. The Rattlesnake Hills Club is a thinly disguised real club. It combines the worst features of a number of courses I've been on. We bring back Joey, inventor of the P-Ball, who once again makes a game changing invention. Using a magic metal and his imagination, Joey fashions the perfect...
Topics: gahlumponium, magic, golf, imagination, Joey, Roy Trumbull, audio book, Rattlesnake Hills
A business scheme based upon truth brings riches to those employing it. Imagine a can of high fructose corn syrup cola with a detailed list of all the medical ills drinking it will cause.
Topics: cola, HFCS, high fructose corn syrup, fiction, audio book, death rockers, Roy Trumbull
Joey visits an MRI machine and learns something about how it images soft tissue. Joey's Uncle Walter has vanished and in his uncles lab he finds something like a home brew MRI machine but it's much different. He figures out it's a portal but to where?
Topics: Joey, MRI, Sci-Fi, fantasy, audio book, Roy Trumbull
A twisted fairy tale that introduces one to the fictions of Wall Street and the legal fictions that make them possible.
Topics: humor, Jack and the beanstock, legal fictions, Wall Street, crooks in Congress, Roy Trumbull,...
Source: www.storyspieler.com
The city kids miss a lot that country kids grow up knowing. Like getting a hen to lay a high density hard drive.
Topics: gallus gallus, sci-fi, hard drive
One would think that the way an FM station makes money is by selling commercials. For decades the owners have made money by selling the station to a bigger fool. Now the biggest fools own all the stations. This story goes back to the early 1960s and how it all began.
Topics: FM radio, trade-outs, due bills, radio schools, limited partnerships, adult content
Joey falls asleep and finds himself on a rail car in 1862 with a young Thomas Edison while the Civil War rages. Because Detroit is adjacent to Canada it was a major station on the Underground Railroad and the crossing point for fugitive slaves. I added mention in the story of the Unitarian minister Thomas Starr King. He was responsible for keeping California from supporting the confederates. For 22 years I worked one block away from his crypt at his church. I don't recall hearing about him in...
Topics: Joey, Edison, adventure, fiction, historical, Civil War, slavery, Starr King, underground railroad
copyright 2008 by Roy Trumbull A young lady is proud of the fact she was named Miss Moose Meat at a beauty contest in Alaska. In fact she never fails to mention the fact, much to the chagrin of her brother. It acts as a boy friend screening process. If a guy is still interested after he hears the tale, then maybe he's the one.
Topics: Alaska, moose, satire, love, beauty contest, love, college, Roy Trumbull
The tale of a bird half parrot and half penguin who is considered a living god by some and a Hollywood star by others. With his friends Juanita and Ruffa the dog he sails in an ancient Egyptian craft from an island in the Antarctic up to the large penguin colony at Punta Tombo, Argentina and is discovered by a movie company shooting yet another penguin movie. Copyright 2007 by Roy Trumbull I was into the third or fourth chapter of this story and I still had no satisfactory name for my hero. I'd...
Topics: parrot, penguin, Sethites, Punta Tombo, Antarctic, volcano, Bird Island, children's stories, audio...
These programs are designed to be a half hour in length and are composed of existing short story files with added information and introductory material. The exception is the Modoc program each of which consists of from 2 to 3 chapters of a book and they run longer. These programs were created for non-commercial internet radio stations.
Topics: Storyspieler, Roy Trumbull, short stories, half hour
A teenager invents a golf ball that can't be lost.
Topics: golf, fantasy, children's stories, audio books, teenagers, Roy Trumbull
Aphorisms to go. Impress your friends and co-workers with all the wisdom of the ancients and moderns.
Topics: aphorisms, wise sayings, SASP, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
These are some notes on the differences between the Jewish bible and the Christian "Old Testament". The order of the books is different. The names of the books are different. The leading names within the stories are different. The translation problems are considerable. What the bible says or may not say remains problematic.
Topics: bible, Christian, Jewish, translation, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
This forecast is based upon existing trends and the certainty that lobbyists will keep anything useful from ever coming out of Washington, D.C..
Topics: weather, global warming, humor, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
Having gotten those two or three page notices from almost every business or service I deal with, the absurdity of it got to me and this was the result.
Topics: privacy notice, satire, government, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
The country is experiencing an epidemic of Kidsheimers in which adults at work turn into children. It is very hush hush. Even the President has it. It is the root cause behind subprime mortgages. When I finished this story in the fall of 2007 I thought everyone could see the coming train wreck. As we've learned since, it was invisible to the Fed, Congress, Wall Street and a lot of banks who should have known better.
Topics: Kidsheimers,humor,satire,whales,disasters, subprime mortgages, investments, Roy Trumbull
I wrote this after seeing one too many ads aimed directly at the rubes to get them to request script for expensive meds.
Topics: drugs, medicine, health care, humor, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
The cell phone has become the default object of religious devotion in our times. Are there cell phones in heaven? Brother Wooley of the "Church of the Cell Phone" answers your questions.
Topics: cell phone, church, religion, humor, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
To save you some time I have created a political ad that pretty much covers the muck you'll hear over the next few months.
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Topics: political, lies, ads, campaigns, smear tactics, Roy Trumbull
Source: www.storyspieler.com
A few years before James M. Barrie wrote the play that would make him famous, he wrote a short story of just four chapters in which he introduced Peter Pan. This Peter was a bit closer to the Pan of mythology and, in fact, he played the Pan pipes for fairy dances. The Peter in the play will be different but an amazing number of themes and settings will go from this short story into the play. Kensington Gardens is a park near Kensington Palace and is one of the Royal Parks.
Topics: Peter Pan, Kensington Gardens, children's stories, fairies, James M. Barrie, Roy Trumbull, audio...
A collection of stories first published in 1908 by Annie Trumbull Slosson. They were first told by a 13 year old girl in a southern village who had an amazing talent for making powerful points with her simple stories. Ms. Slosson took them down with attention to the young ladies' dialect. (The author was my distant cousin.) The text for this book is available at www.gutenberg.org. Search author for Slosson.
Topics: parables, allegories, folk-lore, stories, audio book, dialect, American south, Annie Trumbull...
These American Indian Tales were collected and edited by Cornelius Mathews and first published in 1869. The narrator is Roy Trumbull. The text is available at www.gutenberg.org.
Topics: American Indian, Indian, folklore, fairy tales, children's stories, audio book
"Edison, His Life and Inventions" by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin Published in 1929. Abridged and read by Roy Trumbull. Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931) The complete text is available at www.gutenberg.org. The story of the man who invented over 1000 things including the dual well kitchen sink, wax paper, the quadraplex telegraph, the carbon transmitter and circuitry that made the telephone practical, the phonograph, movies, the first efficient power generator and the...
Topics: Edison, inventor, inventions, patents, light bulb, telegraph, chemistry, electricity, movies,...
These stories were selected from those collected and edited by Joseph Jacobs. Reading these stories gave me a chance to regress to the accent I heard as a child in the Outer Mission District of San Francisco. Those parts of the stories written in dialect use yez for you and axe for ask and I don't recall hearing that in San Francisco. Of the Celts, the Irish were the ones who truly savored stories. And they would take a tale from the middle east or Germany and make it Irish. The text for these...
Topics: Celtic, Fairy Tales, children's stories
This story was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in June 1999 and later appeared in Year's Best Science Fiction 5 - HarperPrism David G. Hartwell, editor. The story contains language that may be considered obscene. A technology is developed to supplant drug treatment of concentration disorders and to level out mood spikes and disruptive behavior. A chip is implanted in the brain that takes over body maintenance and preserves a semblance of social graces when the subject's attention...
Topics: brain implant, therapy, mood disorders, vegetables, Doctorow, Sci-Fi, switched off, zero function
Years after the Xenobots had been vanquished and their home planet destroyed, the human-Ahmanyan alliance discovered, to its dismay, that the Second Xenobot War was not, in fact, truly over. The Xenobot's great weapon that had worked so efficiently in the long ago War of the First Races continued to run on its own, but like so much of the Xenobot's technology, it was wearing out. A sudden collapse of this technology could bring about a catastrophe of unprecedented, perhaps galaxy-wide...
Topics: Starman, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Xenobots, Tharsos, First Races
The Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap While in England Washington Irving finds that so much has been written about Shakespeare that there isn't much left for him to add. Inspired by Henry IV Part 1, he decides to go to Eastcheap and look up the Boar's Head Tavern which was Falstaff's and Prince Hal's old haunt. The text for this story may be found at www.gutenberg.org
Topics: Falstaff, Prince Hal, Shakespeare, Boar's Head, Washington Irving
George Derby was an early American humorist. Mark Twain was a fan. George often wrote using the name John Phoenix. If you fear the dentist, this tale of Mr. Tushmaker's amazing machine for extracting teeth should set you to screaming.
Topics: Tushmaker, George Derby, John Phoenix, humor, tall tales
A Dog In Church by Mark Twain. Anyone who has ever been trapped in the pews while the minister droned on will appreciate this Tom Sawyer Story.
Topics: Twain, dog, humor, church
This reading is from the Masoretic text. The Song of Songs has been the subject of considerable commentary. It is obviously a love poem. The controversy is over whether it is also an allegory concerning man's relationship to Hashem. There are at least two voices in the poem and some will argue that there are three.
Topics: Solomon, love, poetry, bible
A chapter from the 1841 book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles MacKay. This story describes the financial bubble that engulfed all of France from 1717 to 1720. You may take comfort in the fact that there is a precedent for our recent sub-prime idiocy
Topics: John Law, Regent, speculation, stocks, Mississippi, Company of the Indies, bubble, audio book
Washington Irving describes what it was like on a sailing ship going from America to England in 1815. The text for this story may be found at www.gutenberg.org
Topics: Irving, Voyage, sailing, peril at sea
In the six years since their first adventure, Starmen David "Zip" Foster, Mark Seaton, and Joe Taylor have searched for, met, and befriended their allies--the noble and tragic race of Ahmanya. They have also discovered that not only the Ahmanyans but also the people of Earth have a relentless and vicious enemy in the Xenobots. The Xenobots, inhabitants of far distant Omega Centauri, are single-minded in their hatred of the Ahmanyans, the ancient race that had conquered them more than...
Topics: Starmen, Xenobots, Ahmanya, Sci-Fi, science fiction, space, audio books
A Classic Sci-Fi story. Aliens have prepared replicants to invade earth. But they need to go to finishing school to pass as humans. Kidnapped earthmen are their unwitting teachers. The text for this story is at www.gutenberg.org
Topics: Sci-Fi, replicants, aliens, murder, kidnapping, love
This short story was part of a collection published after Jack London's death in 1916. The story is set in Hawaii in the year 1880. I've broken it into two parts. In the first we are introduced to Hardman Pool portrayed as a haole chief lording it over his retainers who are both natives and relatives. Knowing London's sense of humor I sense some of this was a parody of stories written by others. In part two we hear Kumuhana's harrowing tale of being selected as a moe pu'u to be sacrificed to...
Topics: Jack London, fiction, Hawaii, sacrifice, folklore, Hardman Pool, Kumuhana, Kahekili
A humorous poem about a short lived society of men who favored brawls over polite discussion. The Stanislaus River flows from the Sierras down to the Central Valley of California where it joins the San Joaquin River. The city of Modesto is in Stanislaus County.
Topics: Stanislaus, Bret Harte, poem, humor
A skyscraper as a metaphor for life.
Topics: Carl Sandburg, skyscraper, building, life, soul
A team of horses takes fright and carries a small child off into a snow blizzard, where they are quickly lost from sight. A poem in dialect by John Hay. First published in 1870. It was part of a group of poems known as the Pike County Ballads. Pike county is in southwestern Illinois west of Springfield. John Hay was one of Lincoln's private secretaries. He and John Nicolay wrote the 7 volume life and history of Lincoln. At the end of his career he was the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain.
Topics: poetry, poem, Pike County Ballads, children's stories
A super hero runs into the laws of physics.
Topics: super hero.physic, humor, Super Guy
An ambassador on a distant planet matches the psychological quirks of his staff against a crack alien negotiation team at an armistice conference. The text for this story may be found at www.gutenberg.org .
Topics: Randall Garrett, Sci-Fi, Aliens, Intersteller War, armistice, psychology
This is a Zuni folk tale about the corn maidens and their interaction with mortals.
Topics: Indians, corn maidens, Zuni, folklore
The lone survivor of an attack has vital information about an enemy weapon that he must get to earth even if death is his only option. The text for this story may be found at www.gutenberg.org
Topics: Sci-Fi, audio books, Randall Garrett, aliens, space war
No matter the scope of man's accomplishments they soon revert to dust.
Topics: Carl Sandburg, poetry, Great City, rats and lizards, golden girls
Indian Old-Man Stories collected by Frank Bird Linderman A perfect deity (Manitou) is always a problem because the world isn't perfect. The Indians solved that problem by attributing the creation of the world and all its creatures to Old-Man. Old-Man (also called Napa) was full of mischief, he told lies, he got into trouble, and finally became such a problem that Manitou built a lodge for him and told him to stay in it. In these stories, War Eagle, the medicine man, tells his grandchildren why...
Topics: Indians, Indian Old-Man Stories, folklore, American Indian, Linderman, audio book, Indian Why...
A childs view of a hired hand who was good at entertaining his bosses children as he did his work.
Topics: Raggedy Man, James Whitcomb Riley, children, poetry
